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Photographer William Hereford produced what he thinks could be just the thing for cooking magazines looking to make the leap to tablet technology. His short-form, wordless vignettes — which he describes on his blog as "a kind of experiment combining typeface typical of magazines with video which has been shot and edited to feel like a still photograph" — feature lush video of a meal being cooked overlaid with text describing the ingredients, processes, and helpful notes. It's like watching a tightly edited cooking show on mute, with the (literate, copyedited, beautifully laid-out) closed captioning on.

Looking past the practical quibbles of Hereford's example — no quantities or measurements for ingredients; instructions spare almost to the point of abstraction; the puzzling soundtrack choice of Yves Montand's super-depressing song of regret "Les Feuilles Mortes" — this three-minute guide for a dinner of seared duck breast, roasted potatoes, and green salad is a striking step toward the integration of passive and active cooking instruction. The iPad is already considered the great killer of cookbooks — will it turn the food magazine world upside down too?